Wednesday, December 1, 2010

Since 1986, children at Eat’n Park have been enjoying a complimentary Smiley Cookie with every meal. It’s just one reason we’re known as the place for smiles!

Now, we’re excited to announce two new options for kids. In addition to the original Smiley Cookie, children 10 and under can now choose from a Mini Smiley Cookie or an apple at the end of their meal. These new options are part of our LifeSmiles initiative, which aims to help children and their families make healthy choices.

LifeSmiles builds in part on First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move! Campaign to decrease childhood obesity. Common goals of both programs are to provide access to healthy, affordable food and to increase physical activity. Through LifeSmiles, we’ll be investing $1 million and 20,000 volunteer hours over the next five years to support health and wellness initiatives aimed at families. For instance, in 2011, we’ll be partnering with the Pittsburgh Children’s Marathon as part of our commitment to promoting physical activity.

Of course, the principles behind LifeSmiles aren’t new to us. Over the last several years, we’ve made substantial commitments to promoting healthy lifestyles. LifeSmiles will enhance our existing programs like FarmSource, which since 2002 has allowed us to partner with the local agricultural and business community to provide our guests with fresh, wholesome foods; and Eat’n Smart, which gives our guests an easy way to identify menu items that meet their specific dietary requirements. Coupled with these programs, our investment in LifeSmiles will help us fulfill a critical need in our region by giving families the resources and the knowledge they need make healthy choices.

About the blog

Throughout this blog, we hope to share a bit of our culture with you through stories, recipes, and other information that we think you’ll enjoy. More importantly, we hope you’ll share with us – we want to answer those questions you’ve always had about Eat’n Park (how did we come up with that name, anyway?) and we want to hear your ideas, feedback, and hopefully, a few compliments too!

So, please feel free to comment on postings that pique your curiosity. We'll do our best to respond to questions within 72 hours. Please keep in mind that we are a family restaurant; comments containing offensive language will not be posted.